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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26506915">Theater Visits</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowyen/pseuds/Flowyen'>Flowyen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Hermit [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Arcana (Visual Novel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Actress!Reader, Canon Compliant, F/M, Female Apprentice (The Arcana), Muriel POV, Muriel and Asra at the theater, Other, Reader-Insert, Second person POV, Unnamed Apprentice (The Arcana), angsty, apprentice backstory spoilers, being reborn is hard and you are doing your best, but soft, i guess, no MC or y/n used, not too bad, reader POV, so this is kinda sad, the one fic where Muriel isn't in his hut the whole time</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:33:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,682</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26506915</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowyen/pseuds/Flowyen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Muriel's heard about you, of course. From Asra, from the murmurings of the townspeople he catches beneath the drawn up hood of his ragged cloak as he stalks the shadowed alleyways of Vesuvia, a place that's never felt like home. There's something off with your very existence, something distinctly and disjointedly otherworldly, but he can't seem to put his finger on it. </p>
<p>Asra takes him to see you on stage, where you thrive. Where that near-painful ethereal quality shines through when you fabricate a laugh, a smile. </p>
<p>Perhaps the reason it is all so jarring is because you are no longer the person he once knew. The one he misses. The one he once cared for.</p>
<p>But maybe, deep down, he isn't ready to let this version of you go, either.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Apprentice &amp; Asra (The Arcana), Apprentice &amp; Muriel (The Arcana), Apprentice/Muriel (The Arcana), Muriel (The Arcana)/Reader, Muriel (The Arcana)/You</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Hermit [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1927153</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Theater Visits</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In case you didn't read the tags - this story has no route/plot spoilers, but it DOES have heavy apprentice-backstory spoilers, so if you haven't read one of the main routes all the way through yet, you might want to do so before proceeding below :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The theater was quiet that night, to Muriel’s relief. The play hadn’t started yet, and he was happily concealed in the rafters, far away from anyone who might recognize him, flee in temporary terror, and raise an alarm that everyone would forget about a few moments later. It was just easier to stay in the shadows, hide his beastly figure. </p>
<p>Asra sat beside him, though, cross-legged in the junction of one of the beams, looking thoughtfully down at the decorated stage as the lighting crew focused spotlights and the prop masters set the items for the first act of the show, jostling the lush red velvet curtains in the process. </p>
<p>Muriel liked watching theater, he found. He couldn’t always relate to the plot lines of the dramas or the comedies, and he tended to avoid anything that was especially gruesome or murderous - not that they were accurate accounts on either front by <em>any</em> means - but he didn’t like to have reminders. He would slip in either before the house opened or after it had closed, scaling the building and entering through an unattended skylight that he had a sneaking suspicion Asra had enchanted with an anti-notice spell so that no one ever bothered to look for it and catch him in the act, though neither he nor Asra had ever brought it up. There were a lot of things like that skylight, things that they were both intimately aware of and yet never mentioned, as if some silent agreement forbade them from even suggesting the topic in the other’s presence. </p>
<p>Until that night, Asra’s apprentice had been one of them. </p>
<p>“She’s in a play,” Asra had said a few days prior in the lead up to asking Muriel to go and see the very show they were waiting for at present. “Some old passions seem to stick around even after everything that happened. She found a set of scripts in the bookshelf one night and I came home to her figuring out the words on her own, doing the scribbled-in blocking in the livingroom using a broom for a sword. It seems to help.”</p>
<p>“And no one's recognized her yet? From before?”</p>
<p>If talking about the apprentice was off the list of acceptable conversation, talking about what happened that night in Lucio’s bedchambers, about what you had been through prior to that whole clandestine affair, was strictly taboo, and as such, Asra bristled a little at Muriel’s mention of the subject. </p>
<p>But, as it was his nature to recover from such things with a thoughtful shrug and shake of his head, Asra merely shrugged, eyes darting around the stage. “Not that she’s mentioned. No one in the theater company itself, anyhow. She looks different on stage, they put her in a wig.”</p>
<p><em>Well</em>, Muriel thought. <em>That might make this easier to stomach then</em>.</p>
<p>“Who is she playing?” he asked just as some voiceless announcer instructed the audience to remain quiet and seated the whole performance. </p>
<p>“The lead,” Asra replied, the lights around the both of them dimming. </p>
<p>The curtain started to rise.</p>
<p>“Is she any good?”</p>
<p>You were on stage as the scene lit with a brilliant gold that shone off your equally sunshine-hued wig. Your body, draped in an elegant silk tunica, was spread lavishly across a garden bench, with several handmaidens attending you from nearby. You had a wide grin stretching across your face, your painfully sharp, beautiful face that rubbed Muriel the wrong way if he looked at it for too long, graced by that unsettling, unnatural beauty that you’d inherited from the body swap. You looked stunning, breathtaking, carefree. Had Muriel not known better, he would have thought you were the happiest person alive. </p>
<p>“She could fool the Devil himself,” Asra sighed, an expression of intense forlorn on his face as he watched you prance along the stage, voice bubbling over like champagne as it projected far enough to reach them all the way in the topmost part of the roof. </p>
<p>Muriel wasn’t sure if <em>anyone</em> could fool the devil, but after nearly three hours of watching you lie though your teeth in a display of what he supposed everyone else called <em>acting</em>, he saw what Asra meant. Despite knowing you before the plague, when you were on that stage, all he could see you as was your character, as a countess or royalty of some kind who was in a love triangle with a gardener and another member of the pompously played, humorously haughty nobility. Through a series of twists and turns, she falls for the gardner, which prompts the nobleman to challenge him to a duel for your honor, a cliche plot point which was surprisingly overturned by you showing up in trousers and with a rapier yourself, ready to defend your own honor and the right to choose whom to love. Your swordwork could have used a little more instruction, but then again so could the nobleman’s. Muriel’s main qualm with the plot was how passive the gardener was, how willingly he let you fight his battles for him we he poured his heart out to the audience in asides delivered from the middle of rather elaborate flowerbeds on sticky wheels. </p>
<p>In the end, it all worked out, and the curtain fell to a held, passionless kiss among the same roses under a crescent moon. </p>
<p>You were a different person when you came out to take your final bow. You still weren’t the melancholy figure he'd seen hovering near the shop like a phantom, but the smile then was tighter, more controlled, less freely given. Someone tossed a white rose to you, which you managed to catch with a rather surprised look before the cast darted backstage and retired for the night. </p>
<p>Asra, who had remained uncharacteristically quiet throughout the whole affair, stood up with the grace of a fox as he walked to the skylight.</p>
<p>“Do you want to meet her?” he asked Muriel over his shoulder, face obscured by fluffy white curls. </p>
<p>“M-meet her?” Muriel stammered, not having expected the question. “Where, at the shop?”</p>
<p>Asra shook his head, smiled. “In the dressing room.”</p>
<p>“Is that allowed?”</p>
<p>Asra winked once before disappearing through the ceiling and into the stars above. Muriel hesitated for a moment, frozen with the overwhelming desire to <em>not</em> follow Asra into your dressing room, but he realized that if he wasn’t there to keep Asra out of trouble there was no telling what he might get himself into, and so with a resigned sigh, Muriel pulled himself into the night. </p>
<p>The backstage hallways were dark, cramped. The stage was at floor level, surrouned on three sides by towering rows of seats, and so Muriel and Asra had to navigate through the facades until they found the partitioned stalls that acted as individual dressing chambers. Muriel suspected that Asra might be doing some sort of clever concealment spell with the flicking of his nimble fingers, as no one so much as batted an eye at the two of them, even as out of place as they rightfully were. </p>
<p>Still, Muriel was tense, uncomfortable. He’d almost hoped that someone <em>would</em> stop the both of them, stop them from doing something stupid. He didn’t want to see you again, or rather, the person that you had unwillingly become, the undead, out of place-</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>“Asra?” you said upon spotting a glimpse of white hair at your door through the vanity you stared at. You spun over your shoulder as he pushed the thing aside, peeking his head in. </p>
<p>“You were fantastic tonight,” he said with all the tenderness one would use to  address a child.</p>
<p>It made your stomach turn. </p>
<p>“How did you get backstage?” you asked, trying to keep the edge from your voice. Behind him, you saw a tall shadow shift, drawing your attention slightly, but it was not close enough to discern a clear face. “Did you bring someone?”</p>
<p>Asra’s smile faltered a little, and he glanced back briefly. “You always were able to see through my concealment spells,” he mused, opening the door wider. “This is Muriel, he’s an old friend of mine.”</p>
<p>The man was staring at you as though he was seeing a ghost, a look that you were all too familiar with from passersby in the marketplace, and it was one of the main reasons why you avoided venturing outside too often without some form of camoflouge, whether in the form of a charm or just a low hanging hood or strategically wrapped scarf. You had even specifically asked that the costumers put you in the elaborate blonde wig - which was at present sitting on the mannequin beside you - to avoid that look of haunted recognition while you did the only thing that brought you any sense of satisfaction those days, and yet there you were, confronted with it all the same in the darkened eyes of this stranger before you. </p>
<p>You played with your hair for a moment, feeling the spiraling tendrils that the pin curls had left as they brushed over your skin. </p>
<p>“It is nice to meet you, Muriel,” you say, the words rehearsed. “Have I had the pleasure before?”</p>
<p>Something crosses his face at that, perhaps it’s the formality of your tone, the structured, practiced words. After all, you had to relearn your vocabulary as it once was after a few weeks of waking up from whatever had happened. Asra was endlessly patient with you, of course, and mentally, you had no problem coming up with thoughts, sentences. Words jumped around in your head to the point of madness, on some occasions. Writing, when you were able to grasp the coordination, often proved easier than speaking for that matter, and it let you take away some of that jumbled mess of words sticking to the sides of your brain when left unattended for too long. In the same vein, scripts were helpful because they gave you an excuse to practice saying the same things over and over until the words stopped feeling so strange in your mouth, so foreign. Casual conversation amongst friends, in contrast, was almost comically difficult, a shortcoming you were more than a little insecure of.</p>
<p>Not that you had many friends at present.</p>
<p>Asra’s brow furrowed. “You don’t re-”</p>
<p>“No,” Muriel interrupted, his voice deep and certain and altogether a surprise to your ears. “I don’t think we have.”</p>
<p>You bit back some more words and merely smiled politely, the sort of thing your character in the play would have done. You didn’t want Asra there, didn’t want him bringing his - admittedly, very attractive - friends to see the state of undress and vulnerability in which you so often found yourself, old acquaintances or not. But, while words sometimes had trouble coming to you in a clear fashion, an untraceable but quite present sense of ingrained decorum had no trouble reminding you to <em>mind your manners</em>, and so despite the unwelcome intrusion, you remained polite, servile. </p>
<p>“I hope you enjoyed the show,” you said, each word a careful effort. You selected those which you knew, syllables which were familar. “It is only the third night that we have run it.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t notice a single mistake,” Asra said genuinely. He was standing in your dressing room now, and Muriel took the cue to shuffle in and shut the door halfway. He looked enormously tall in the cramped space despite clearly taking up as little room as physically possible for him. He stood in the corner, eyes looking at the costumes on their mannequins or the posters hung on the wall. Anywhere, you noticed, except for you. </p>
<p>If he had been any less nervous-seeming himself, you had the sinking suspicion that you would be quite afraid of him indeed. </p>
<p>“I was thinking that we could go get a drink,” Asra said cheerily, breaking your stare away from the mysterious stranger. “Celebrate the success of opening weekend and all.”</p>
<p>He was smiling so kindly, the constant, ever-present worry in his eyes twinkling behind the facade of friendliness, of interest. The drink wasn’t to celebrate you, you realized as you stalled on your answer. He was worried with you spending so much of your time at the theater, away from where he could keep an eye on you. You might have been born recently, as far as you and your missing memories were concerned, but you could still pick up on things, on social cues. You could still read him like an open book.</p>
<p>“All the three of us?”</p>
<p>Asra’s hopeful smile faltered. You heard Muriel scoff in the corner. </p>
<p>“I don’t go out,” he mumbled, sounding the way an earthquake felt. For some reason, you remembered that particular sensation, within your bones if not in your present recollection. </p>
<p>“You came to the theater,” you pointed out before really thinking about it, about how it might rile him up.</p>
<p>Muriel sent a pointed glare at Asra before walking back to the door. “Yeah, but now I'm thinking that was a mistake.”</p>
<p>Looking helpless, Asra seemed torn between staying in your dressing room and going after Muriel.</p>
<p>But, as you could have predicted, he stayed for you. He merely sighed, pressed his lips together, and after a few moments of Muriel disappearing from view, you found that your mind turned away from him completely, instead focusing on Asra and something that he had just said to you. Now, what had it been…</p>
<p>“Drinks?” Asra prompted, looking like he could use one himself. You didn’t know why his face seemed so worn, so sad. </p>
<p>You assumed that, like usual, that expression was as a result of something you had done without realizing, like the time you asked if you’d been intimate with each other in the past you couldn’t remember. Asra had looked as though you’d slapped him. </p>
<p>“If you buy,” you relent, brushing out the last of your hair and leaving the comb on your little vanity. </p>
<p>“Of course,” Asra replied, leading you out with a sweep of a strong, safe arm clad in purple silk.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>Muriel watched the pair of you exit the theater’s backdoor. He’d waited, wondering if you’d go with Asra, be obedient. You let him wrap his arm around your shoulder, though the way you held yourself was stiff, rigid. </p>
<p>He missed your wild side, your sharp tongue. The <em>thing</em> you were now, the even-voiced, eggshell treading mess that he saw in that dressing room, was not the person he remembered. He knew very well how you’d left things with Asra when he vanished during the plague, the argument of the decade which sent him packing for the hills and you scowling at the wall of the shop for half following day. It was ironic, really, that the Asra who didn’t want to spend his days caring for the sick had essentially halted his life to bring yours back, making sacrifices and bargains that should not be taken lightly. </p>
<p>Maybe somewhere you remembered that argument too, even if you didn’t realize it. Why else would you be so tense with him?</p>
<p>Regardless, it all just reminded Muriel how glad was to know how to avoid being seen, hold a reputation for dining alone. He wouldn’t be caught dead in a bar at the best of times, let alone when he had to watch some <em>creature</em> parading around in the body of one of the few people who he’d ever cared about, who he’d dared to get close to. </p>
<p>The one person who might have let <em>him</em> get close in return. </p>
<p>But that person was gone, and as you and Asra rounded the corner, Muriel told himself that it was probably for the best anyway, consoling his aching, broken heart with the same rhetoric he’d told himself since he could remember. He would have been a burden to you had you stayed, you would have come to fear him, just like everyone else. It couldn’t have worked.</p>
<p><em>After all</em>, he thought, shuffling away from the alley and beginning the long, solitary journey back to the woods. <em>It was nothing new. </em></p>
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